search the drone

racy gag

Primary school teacher takes a group of infant boys and girls on a trip to Cheltenham to learn about horses.

During the afternoon she takes the children to the loos and waits outside.

One of the boys comes out to tell her that none of them can reach the urinal.

Having no choice, she goes inside and helps them with their pants and begins hoisting the boys up one by one.

As she lifts one boy she can’t help but notice that he is unusually well endowed. Trying not to stare she says, “you must be in the sixth form.”

“No love,” he replies, “I’m riding Silver Shadow in the 2.15.”

lawton memorial

By CLIVE GOOZEE

An elite squad of Fleet Street sports journalists filled St Bride’s Church on February 28 to pay tribute to former Daily Express and Independent columnist James Lawton.

It was a stirring occasion conducted by Rev Alison Joyce, with readings by Jim’s oldest daughter, Jacinta, who had travelled from Vancouver, Patrick Collins of the Mail on Sunday, James Mossop, Sunday Express, former Independent editor, now ‘i’ columnist Simon Kelner and the star of TV’s Cold Feet, James Nesbitt, a long-time friend of Jim’s.

When the actor appeared on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs he chose the writings of James Lawton as his third book to go with the Bible and Shakespeare’s complete works.

Wife Linda and daughters Vicky and Hannah were joined by Jim’s grandchildren.

old drone back online

collette steps up

Warm congratulations to Daily Express assistant editor Collette Harrison who has been promoted to deputy editor.

She replaces Michael Booker who has been made deputy editor (weekends) focusing on the Sunday Express.

In other movements Caroline Waterston has been appointed group editor-in-chief of OK! and New magazines, based at Lower Thames Street, London. She was previously deputy editor of the Express and Star titles.

Fran Goodman, currently deputy chief sub of the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, is joining the Daily Express as assistant editor (features).

geddes celebration

Philip was just 24 when he died and the two big things in his short life were journalism, at which he excelled, and his university.

Colleagues and friends created the Geddes Awards, which celebrated their 35th birthday last night with a barnstorming Memorial Lecture from The Times's David Aaronovitch.

Since its inception the charity has rewarded more than 100 young journalists with prizes of up to £2,500 to spend on journalistic projects — but just as important it has mentored, taught and encouraged many more.

Now chaired by the indefatigable Peter Cardwell, it goes from strength to strength.

Philip will never be forgotten.

latest media news

top job for louise

FORMER Sunday Express Magazine editor Louise Robinson has been appointed editor of the soon-to-be relaunched Saga magazine, according to Press Gazette.

stop press!

Number of Scots dancing for exercise halves in a decade — The Scotsman

Grandad returns from Cornwall by bus — Kent and Sussex Courier

Mobile phone found in prisoner’s hair — Daily Telegraph

Beach cleaners find 50-year-old crisp packet — Eastern Daily Press

Man convicted of burglary armed with a potato — Irish Post

Source: The Oldie

old jokes home

My wife and I are incompatible. I've no income and she's not pattable — Groucho Marx

*****

A man lies dying; his wife is by his bed. 'There's something I must confess.’

‘Shhhh,' said his wife. 'Everything is OK.’

‘NO!' the husband replied. 'I must die in peace. I had sex with your sister, your best friend and her mum!’

'I know,' she whispered, 'That's why I poisoned you.'

old jokes home

Man with newt on his shoulder goes into bar.

Barman says: What’s his name?

Tiny.

Why Tiny?

Because he’s my newt

— Tommy Cooper

__________

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather ... not like the screaming passengers in his car.

clarification of the year

Hats off to the Daily Mirror for getting to make the sort of retraction that every journalist dreams of:

"A previous version of this article suggested that Katie Hopkins was stopped from leaving South Africa because of the consumption of ketamine. We are happy to clarify that Ms Hopkins was detained for spreading racial hatred, which took place after the ketamine incident."

slide of the daily Mail

This from Charles Moore, writing in The Spectator:

I may have spoken too soon when I predicted that the Daily Mail might not suffer from its Brexit volte-face at the Daily Telegraph's Christmas Charity phone-in on Sunday.

I was struck by how many donating readers mentioned the Mail’s desertion, and by reports of recruitment by the Telegraph of disconsolate Mail readers.

There are rumours that the Mail’s new editor, Geordie Greig, has personally rung to plead with readers who are cancelling their subscriptions. Geordie is a charming man, but obviously he cannot speak to all the disgruntled tens of thousands.

The Mail has chosen to switch from an insurgent to an establishment position just when that establishment is more discredited than at any time since the 1930s.

It is almost as if the Harmsworths had decided to bet the farm on appeasement in September 1939. It is a weird way for a popular paper to behave.

cock-up from over-seize

Travel page headline in Johannesburg Star: Indian delights never seize to amaze

old jokes home

I cleaned out the attic with the wife at the weekend. Damp, filthy, full of cobwebs. But she’s great with the kids.— Tommy Cooper

latest goss

Rupert Murdoch asked Lord Rothermere at a recent lunch why he removed Paul Dacre from the Daily Mail. Rothermere replied it was because Dacre was "bad for business”.

Source: Popbitch

exclusiveWhy letts quit

Our spy at Northcliffe House has revealed the story behind star columnist Quentin Letts’ decision to leave the Daily Mail.

Letts was furious when he was asked to tone down his stance on Brexit.

The Mail under new editor Geordie Greig is now peddling the Remainer line, a complete about-face from the paper’s strongly Brexit campaign under Paul Dacre.

Headlines on Letts' sketch were softened by Greig so he announced he was off. Greig pleaded with him to change his mind to no avail.

Dacre is said to be steaming and probably loving it at the same time.

An old Daily Express hand commented: "It is strange that it’s not the Express that’s being ruined. Ah yes, that’s already been sabotaged."

Letts, who was in theory a freelance, will now write for The Times and The Sun.

laws’ new thriller

Exit Day, a spy thriller by Expressman DAVID LAWS, is now available as a ebook on Amazon at a bargain 99p. The Drone gives it a 5-star rating as a terrific page-turner.

thought for the day

The Canadian government has passed two laws — to legalise gay marriage and marijuana.

This is, of course, in line with the precepts of the Holy book. To paraphrase Leviticus 20, verse 13: "If a man lies with another man they should be stoned.”

Apparently we just hadn't interpreted it correctly before.

tits up again at the sun

The Sun seems to be undergoing a strange pang of nostalgia at the minute, reports Popbitch.

Rebekah Brooks has commissioned a special book to commemorate 50 years of Page 3, a feature that the paper quietly dumped three years ago, and has gone out of its way to avoid addressing ever since.

Even odder, the person she's brought in to head up the project is her former deputy editor, Geoff Webster, one of the journalists who was suspended from the paper following his arrest as part of Operation Elveden in 2012.

Happy days are here again!

POCKET CARTOON

old jokes home

Just spent £300 on a limousine and discovered that the fee doesn't include a driver.

Can't believe I've spent all that money and I have nothing to chauffeur it.

just fancy that

boning up on obits

Former Express and Mirrorman Peter Michel tells the Drone that he has been discussing with Pat Welland (also ex-Express and Mirror) the huge increase in obituaries published in the latest newsletter of the Association of Mirror Pensioners.

This, of course, is a trend to be seen in the columns of your favourite website.

Peter takes up the story: “I wondered if there was such a thing as a generic term for obituaries. Pat replied, brilliantly: 'What about an ossuary of obits?'

"I defy anyone to beat that. My own effort, a passing of obits, pales by comparison."

Q: What do you call a dead magician?

A: An abracadaver

FLEET STREET ROMP

Another day, another great book written by an old Fleet Street hand.

Guttersnipe, by Dick Durham, a long-serving Daily Star reporter, tells of the Wild West days at the Black Lubyanka and Ludgate House.

Michael Hellicar, who alerted the Drone to the book, said: "I read it from cover to cover last night. It landed on my Kindle at 8pm and I finished it at 4am, not even stopping to pour myself a glass of supper.

"A great romp, full disclosure about not only tabloid excesses but Fleet Street fun in general.

"There are loads of Express names thrown into his adventures as well as those of his Star colleagues and other papers.

"Dick, one of the gentler, more thoughtful reporters during a time when the only story-getting talent required was a wedge shoe and a thick skin, pulls no punches in his assessments of everyone, from editors to news editors and colleagues.

"He doesn't know I have written to you about this; indeed, the book has had no publicity as far as I can see. But I do commend it to Drone readers.”

Guttersnipe, A Tabloid Hack’s Fleet Street Memoir, is available on Amazon for £6.39 paperback, or for a bargain £2 on Kindle.

james lawton

James Lawton, the former chief sports writer of the Daily Express and one of the greatest sportswriters of his generation, died suddenly on 27 September in Italy. He was 75.

Richard Lewis wrote in the Daily Express on 28 September: Lawton was a master of his art, producing glorious prose from sport’s biggest stages, never more so than at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

His incisive observations in the early morning hours when news broke of 100m champion Ben Johnson testing positive led to him being named as the SJA Sports Writer of the Year in 1988.

Under the back-page headline “Disgraced" — 30 years to the day yesterday — Lawton wrote about how Canadian cheat Johnson had betrayed all the Olympic heroes.

He said: “The joy has gone from the Olympic Village that went to sleep with the optimism of youth and awoke as old as sin.”

Whatever sport Lawson wrote about, he did so with an authority that brought him an army of fans.

Lawton had two spells at the Express. After his first, he went to work for the Vancouver Sun and then returned to the Express to become Chief Sports Writer, a position he held for 20 years before joining The Independent.

Lawton was still a columnist with the Irish Independent, who reported he was due to have a story published in yesterday’s edition.

Reg Davis

Old jokes home

My wife says I have only two faults — I don’t listen and some other shit she was rattling on about.

*****A man was riding his Harley along a California highway, when suddenly the sky cleared above his head and in a booming voice, the Lord said: 'Because you have tried to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish.'

The biker pulled over and said: 'Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want.'

The Lord said, 'Your request is materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking; the supports required reaching the bottom of the Pacific, and the concrete and steel it would take.

'It will nearly exhaust several natural resources. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that could possibly help mankind.'

The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said: 'Lord, I wish that I and all men could understand women; I want to know how she feels inside, what she's thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing's wrong, why she snaps and complains when I try to help, and how I can make a woman truly happy.’

The Lord replied: ‘Do you want two lanes or four lanes on that bridge?'

greig gets mixed reviews as he takes over at mail

Geordie Greig’s first days as editor of the Daily Mail have not gone down well with some of his staff, according to The Guardian.

The article also suggests that previous editor Paul Dacre was forced out.

Greig’s speech to staff received mixed reviews ranging from “odd” to “meaningless waffle”.

One Daily Mail staffer said: “If the paper becomes as boring as that speech we’re in trouble.”

Those were the days

When Winston Churchill sailed in the Dunnottar Castle for Cape Town in 1899, he made sure he was fully equipped to cover the Boer War for the Morning Post, writes RICK McNEILL

In his luggage was a case containing “a dozen and a half bottles of whisky, two dozen bottles of wine, half a dozen each of port, vermouth and eau de vie and a dozen lime juice” supplied by Randolph Payne & Sons.

Total cost £26 18s. The Post picked up the tab. And his valet Thomas Walden did the heavy lifting.

Bertie would have approved.

rent a gob

I didn't spend too much time pondering the ethics of how a story was gained nor over-worry about whether to publish or not. If we believed the story to be true and we felt Sun readers should know the facts, we published it and we left it to them to decide if we had done the right thing. They could decide we were correct and carry on purchasing us — in my time in ever-increasing numbers — or could decide we were wrong, in which they could decline to buy us again, ie Hillsborough — Kelvin MacKenzie

how to GET AHEAD

Glue a dead wasp to the palm of your hand then slap your editor hard on the back of the head. You can then claim to have saved him from a nasty sting.

New jokes home

Comedian Adam Rowe has won the award for the best joke told at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

“Working at the job centre has to be a tense job,” he told his audience. “Knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day.”

the things they say

It is wonderful that it [the Drone] has carried on so long and, indeed, appears to go from strength to strength being now a refuge and comfort for raddled old hacks trying to find out what they did 40 years ago — Pat Welland

*****

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience — Mark Twain

*****Don’t get it right, just get it written — James Thurber

*****

Don’t worry if your A level grades aren’t any good. I got a C and 2 Us. And I’m sitting here deciding which of my Range Rovers to use today — Jeremy Clarkson

*****Just take the fucking picture — Prince Philip to a photographer who was taking too long to set the picture up.

More from Philip:At Sandringham the Prince bellowed "you people are scum" at a gaggle of hacks gathered at the gates. "We may be," answered one reporter. "But we are the crème de la scum."

To a French photographer "Vous etes fou, restez chez vous” (you are a fool go home)

On a visit to Canada: "I declare this thing open, whatever it is."

*****

I've been at the bottom. I've been at the top. Both places are empty — Singer and actress Nico.

*****

He doesn’t look for trouble but he doesn’t make decisions with the utmost clarity at certain stages of the night — Graeme Swann on Ben Stokes in the Sunday Times.

*****

Opinion columns were designed by God to have the same lifespan as a croissant — Alexander Cockburn

*****

Be stupid, be dumb, be funny, if that's who you are. Don't try to be someone that society wants you to be; that's stupid. So be yourself — Christina Grimmie

*****The Right Hon was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'When!’

— P G Wodehouse in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930

barry’s last chuckle

From The Times Diary,18 August:

Barry Chuckle’s funeral took place yesterday and one mourner paid tribute by repeating a favourite Chuckle Brothers gag they had witnessed in panto.

Barry and Paul were in bed in the middle of the night. “What time is it?” Barry, pictured, asked.

“Dunno, pass me that trombone and I’ll find out,” said Paul who then proceeded to blow the trombone loudly.

Off stage a voice boomed: “Who’s that playing a trombone at 2am?"

Old Jokes home 1

I don’t wish to brag but today I went into another room and remembered why I did so.

It was the bathroom, but still...

OLD JOKES HOME 2

Burton and Taylor were boozing in a Welsh pub.

Cheeky miner to Liz: “What would you say to a little fuck?”

Liz: “I’d say ‘hello little fuck’.”

express staff at the helm for geordie’s daily mail

New Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig has assembled a small group of loyalists to help him assert his grip on a paper where almost everybody owes their career to Paul Dacre.

Gerard Greaves and Tobyn Andreae, who have previously worked on the Mail on Sunday, will be his deputies, while MoS City editor, Ruth Sunderland, is also being brought over.

What’s the common denominator? They all formerly worked for the Daily Express.

Dacre edited his last edition of the Mail last week. Greig, editor of the Mail on Sunday, takes over at the daily on September 1.

letter to the editor

Dear Sir,

Jeff Connor’s reminiscences about the early days of the Daily Star are a right riveting read (as they used to say on that paper). His tribute to Ray Mills, particularly, brought a tear to the eye. Really.

The Docker was a great guy and a very accomplished journalist: a stickler for the facts and doing things right. I remember him saying to me: “On any good newspaper there is always room for a fooking pedant.”

quote of the week

A suffragan bishop called and was somewhat disconcerted when J B Morton, who writes the Beachcomber column, crept into the room on his hands and knees barking like a dog.

That was the only out-of-routine occurrence — an unusual one of course, even for the Express! — legendary editorArthur Christiansen in his brilliant memoir Headlines All My Life

STILL BREATHING:it’s a hi from hyphen

A runner with a cleft stick arrives exhausted at Drone Towers with a message from former Express sub John Fox-Clinch, who would like to say Hi to his erstwhile colleagues.

John, known as Hyphen, writes: I have been catching up on yesteryear — 24/25 years to be precise via the Daily Drone.

I found it courtesy of Nigel Lilburn who I discovered on the internet while sitting in an Auckland airport lounge last year.

I have to tell you that Hyphen is alive and well, remarried and living happily (very) in North Somerset — and just about to go to France for three weeks.

I am now aged 74, so not much younger than any of you other overweight old buggers! (I have seen the pictures). [Sorry Hyphen, but you are older than many of us — Ed]

After leaving you all in 1994 I was in PR/company media services into the early 2000s until hooking up with Tel (Manners) who became editor of the Western Daily Press in Bristol (he paid piss-poor wages but it suited me at the time in the midst of business and first marriage collapse).

Anyway I was later headhunted by Peter Hargreaves, Bristol’s first billionaire, before retiring a year or so later.

What since? In the words of the great News of the World headline after George Best was up before the Football Association, Sweet FA! And I love it.

Glad to read you are all doing well — except for the few RIPs — a bit like the Daily Express.

Just fancy that

The Dowager Countess of Harewood, who has died, was the mother from an earlier marriage of former Daily Express assistant features editor Mike Shmith.

Rick McNeill, who vouchsafed this intelligence to the Drone, said: "Not many people know that.”

Now you do.

stig’s harsh words for ‘inept’ express papers

A new book by Stig Abell, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, former director of the PCC and former managing editor of The Sun, has harsh words for the Express and its former owner Richard Desmond.

How Britain Really Works looks at our institutions in an attempt to understand what makes them, and therefore the country, tick.

In the section on Old and New Media he has harsh words for the Express and Richard Desmond.

Writing about the tone and style of Fleet Street’s newspapers, he characterises the Express titles like this:

“The Daily and Sunday Express: shambolic and inept, terrified of their then-owner and Napoleon of rubbish journalism, Richard Desmond.”

In a footnote Abell adds: “I met him once at a party. When I was introduced, he glared at me with his porcine eyes set deep within the recesses of his flushed face.

“'Are you fucking queer?’

“‘Er, no, as it happens.’

“‘Well, you’ve got a beard.’

“And the conversation ended. Not that there was a great deal more to say.”

Bill Spicer

Bill Spicer, features editor of the Daily Express in the 1970s, has died after a long illness bravely borne. He was 84.

ESTHER HARROD, his friend and colleague, has written a tribute. Read it here.

don’t call us ...

A correspondent writes:

Herewith a brand-new, never-before-told waiter/soup gag. It came to me as I was doing the washing-up a short while ago...

"I say, waiter. Do you serve Eskimo Soup?"

"Not sure, sir. I'll look Inuit."

Just fancy that

The Duke of Cambridge went to the University of St Andrews, while the Earl of St Andrews went to Cambridge.

*****A Sussex policeman who has been working as a prostitute has been named — it’s Detective Constable Dick Holder. [Popbitch]

last bolthole closes

The Journalists’ Charity has been forced to close its nursing home in Dorking after running it at huge losses for the past few years.

The 14 residents of Pickering House in Dorking, Surrey, have been given three months notice to quit.

The charity still operates Ribblesdale, its sheltered housing scheme. Also situated in Dorking, it comprises eight bungalows and 12 flats and is designed for people who are able to manage and care for themselves.

Just Fancy that

The man who invented predictive text died yesterday. His funfair is a weed next monkey.

*****Doctor: I’m sorry but you’re suffering from AutoCorrect Syndrome

Patient: I didn’t even know I was I’ll.

Another great book about fleet Street

Another excellent book about the Street of Broken Dreams was presented to Lord Drone today upon his customary silver salver.

Ther title Reverse Ferret, recalls the happy days of Kelvin MacKenzie on The Sun and the Daily Express when the phrase was used to describe a sudden change in a page or editorial direction.

It is written under a nom de plume, W M Boot, whose identity is known to the editor of this organ, who values him/her as a friend and colleague of long-standing.

Suffice to say that he/she spent much of his/her career on the Mirror and The Times.

The blurb to the book states:

High jinks, low jinks, death, corruption and betrayal. An everyday story of newspaper folk. By one who survived. Summer 1986. Sunday Chronicle journalist Preston Wicks is on the brink of publishing the biggest story of his career; an exposé of corruption in high - and low - places.

What has begun as a kiss and tell story about a wife cheated on by her footballer husband has become an investigation into allegations that he threw matches for a betting syndicate. The trail leads from the penalty spot to a casino tycoon who, it transpires, has a senior policeman and an MP on his payroll.

To add to the turmoil, the Chronic's editor dies mysteriously in his office in the arms of one of Preston's colleagues. A heart attack - but is there more to it? He died with a fountain pen in his right hand - but the editor was left handed. Foul play? Who were the editor's enemies? He had many. Who is in the syndicate?

Will Preston discover the truth of the death and expose the racketeers? And will he survive the tumultuous affair he has been having with the editor's secretary?

old jokes home

Stone sisters

expressman rick’s memoir of a long newspaper life

Another book alert.

Rick McNeill, who spent 20 years in senior production roles on the Daily Express, has written an entertaining memoir, What Genius Wrote This? Tales From My Newspaper Life, which is available now on Kindle, Apple iBooks and Google Play.

Lord Drone has graciously permitted a review of this excellent tome to appear in these pages.

another great read

NEWS reaches Drone Towers of another cracking book. This one is by Michael Evans who was a frontline reporter on the Daily Express for 16 years and then The Times for 30 years.

First With The News covers, among many other things, the Balcombe Street and Spaghetti House sieges and the wars in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Afghanistan.

The book has terrific five-star reviews on Amazon Books as well as in the Daily Express. First with the News is available in paperback and ebook can be purchased HERE

My savile TRAVail

It is not just the world of showbiz that suffers from what is euphemistically called the casting couch, it happens in all walks of life, including newspapers.

JEANETTE BISHOP recalls her ordeal at the hands of Jimmy Savile when she worked at The People as a 21-year-old. #MeToo

CUrry and Quips

Farewell Fleet Street

Former Sunday Times journalist Maurice Chittenden, who began his career on The Sun 40 years ago, has written an excellent piece for the European Journalism Laboratory about the end of Fleet Street – and his employment. Read it here

TWEET AS A nut

Lord Drone’s old friend and colleague TERRY MANNERS is all over Twitter these days, putting the world to rights. Very entertaining he is too.

He was not a little puzzled to be called a ‘condescending fucktrumpet’ by a fellow Tweeter.

Even more bewildering is the fact that his critic appears from his profile picture to be a hamster.

Terry has 1,481 followers at the moment so why not follow him at his handle @TelBabe ?

Jack’s name lives on

Do you remember Jack Lee? He was a fine night reporter on the Daily Express before his premature death some years ago.

His widow Kim Gandy has sent us two pics of his daughter Bethany her son Jack Junior.

DIANA’S ‘BITCH' PLOY

PRINCESS Diana’s biographers say that the paparazzi’s big trick with Diana was to continually call her a bitch while they were taking her picture so that she’d look angry, or sad, or (ideally) start crying.

A pretty grim tactic, but what’s interesting is that ‘bitch’ is the word that Diana herself often chose to say when having her photo taken.

She said she always found it left her mouth in a more alluring shape than saying ‘cheese’ did.

Source: Popbitch

ancoats remembered

BOB CUMMINGS, was a comp and overseer at the Daily Express in Manchester from 1970 until 1989. In two amusing dispatches from the North he recalls his time at Ancoats.

TEl tells all: Parts 2 and 3

a farthing for your thoughts...

Lord Drone has been chatting to the historical novelist Rory Clements, formerly of this parish.

Clements recalled a famous moment on the Daily Express in the 1980s when a caption appeared on a front-page proof recording gardening correspondent Donald Farthing bowing as he shook the Queen’s hand at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Thanks to some wit in the composing room the caption read: “Donald Farting with the Queen.”

This was quickly corrected and as far as His Lordship remembers it didn’t get into the paper.

IS PRINT DEAD?

Just fancy that

From the Times Diary, December 24:

The Queen’s “heavy cold” reminds Chris Cramer, a former director at CNN, of his time as a trainee on the Portsmouth Evening News. Covering HM’s tour of Hampshire villages many years ago, he wrote in his colour piece that she “showed no sign of her recent head cold”.

A furious sub-editor bellowed: “What’s this hyperbolic rubbish? Did you expect her to wind down the window and gob in the street?”

NEWS JUST IN:

A Drone reader who was there at the time fleshes up this story:

"I believe Chris C has it slightly wrong. The quote as I remember it was from one Bill Snow, an old-time sub with a large cubical Bakelite deaf-aid strapped to his chest.

"On first-read of the copy he said to the subs’ table at large: “He’s got here, ‘The Queen as she rode by in her Rolls showed no signs of her recent catarrh and sinusitis trouble’ – apart, I suppose, from the occasional gob out the window!”

'This would have been in the mid-to-late 1950s when I was occasional subbing on the Portsmouth Evening News (later to become The News). I remember it on the day – the office falling about with laughter.

REMIND you of anyone?

The Drone’s team of researchers has unearthed a quote from Anthony Trollope which could have been applied to many journalists who worked on the Daily Express in the old days.

A person from the news subs immediately came to mind to the editor but there was one in every department. Feel free to apply it to a person of your choice:

"There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance, a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour allowing him to plead his own case in his own court, within his own heart and always to plead it successfully.”

Messenger! A picture of B*ll M*nty to go with this piece please.

A reader writes: A Drone such as his lordship should revel in PG Wodehouse's immortal quote: "It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

Bagpipes and BUBBLY:a Grand bit of fun

A trawl of the internet has unearthed a piece written by Roy Greenslade, a good friend of the Daily Drone, in 2014.

He reproduced an hilarious column that former Daily Express William Hickey editor John McEntee wrote for The Oldie.

The piece richly illustrates the fun that used to be had in the old Fleet Street and which is celebrated by this website.

Lord Drone is personally greatly saddened to report the death of his good friend Ian ‘Bunter’ Benfield at the age of 84.

Ian had been suffering from vascular dementia for two years, as as his son Guy reports below in The Journalist.

Bunter was a top news sub-editor on the Daily Express for many years where his agreeable nature and good humour made him a popular and valued member of staff.

He was never happier than when he was drinking beer in the pub with his colleagues.

Ian died last December but news of his death has only just reached Drone Towers. His funeral was in January.

DICK DISMORE remembers: Bunter, the man who subbed the Yorkshire Ripper trial single-handed — and the Printer didn’t bother setting the running copy. Much to the consternation of the Night Editor, one K. MacKenzie, who monstered the culprit so badly he had to buy him a bottle of whisky to ensure publication of the next day’s paper.

And Bunter just kept subbing and let it all wash over him. Happy days.

Ian's brother, Derek Benfield, pictured above, was an actor, best known for his role as transport company foreman Bill Riley in the TV series The Brothers.

Jim, who has lived in the Dordogne region of France for the past 15 years, was interviewed about his attitudes to Brexit with a fellow villager in Corgnac-sur-L’Isle.

As you perceive from his expression he is not keen on it. Jim said he was worried about continuing to receive free health care after he had undergone three recent operations in France.

__________

Expressman David Laws gets full-page treatment

Long-serving Expressman David Laws is busily publicising his latest novel Brexit Day, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the Bury Free Press in his native Suffolk.

The paper gave David the full-page treatment with an interview with writer Barbara Eeles.

The book, a thriller, involves an out-of-favour journalist who tracks down a group of spies intent on sabotaging Brexit — and an assassin who is stalking the Prime Minister.

It’s a cracking read and is available as an ebook or paperback on Amazon. BUY IT HERE

___________

Brandt’s masterpiece

An atmospheric picture of Battersea Power Station taken in 1936 by Bill Brandt. It is from his classic series of night photographs of London inspired by Brassaï’s pictures of Paris.

Brandt was arguably the most influential photographer of his generation and this picture is widely regarded as a masterpiece.

___________

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SIR — Your organ rightly points out that the answer to any headline with a question mark at the end of it is invariably 'no’.

Ernie Burrington, when night editor at the Mirror decades ago, would attest to the truth of this by citing the following classic example (from the Daily Herald, I believe): Is this the face of Christ in the sole of a cobbler's boot?

My question is: Is there an earlier or more absurd example? Silly me. The question mark provides its own answer.

Yours etc

CONFUSED of Epsom

__________

Sir — I was intrigued to read in your mighty organ the reference to “the face of Christ on a cobbler’s boot.”

This may be an offshoot of a similar miraculous apparition which is indeed linked with the late, great Ernie Burrington, with whom I worked on both the Daily Herald and The People and who was mentioned in your item

Ernie was chief sub on the Herald when they published an astonishing picture showing the face of Christ in a patch of snow. This picture remained in the Odhams library and was occasionally exhumed to make appearances in The People when Ernie was deputy editor. It invariably produced a torrent of letters from readers who had spotted the face of our saviour in a variety of alternative settings including a pancake and a bar of soap.

Regards

PLAIN JOHN SMITH

__________

A song about Brexit

(Contains swearing)

________________

FLEET STREET PUB BY CANDLELIGHT, 1988

GREAT TIMES: The Observer has republished a fascinating piece about Fleet Street watering holes written at the time the paper left for new pastures in 1988. The picture shows the conviviality continuing despite a power cut.

HERE’S an uncanny resemblance. Chris Williamson, the extreme-Left MP booted out of the Labour Party for denying anti-semitism was a major problem is known as the Vegan Serial Killer, because he’s a vegan and … well you get the message.

Momo is an internet hoax intended to scare the daylights out of children. Fortunately Momo doesn’t exist and many people wish Mr Williamson didn’t either.

One thing that can be said with certainty is that they have never been spotted in the same abattoir together.

Which is nice.

PICTURE OF THE YEAR

SALISBURY JOURNAL

____________________

VIZ

_____________________

CARTOON EXTRA

BILL TIDY

____________________Express and Star help Reach to boost profits

PUBLISHER Reach increased its revenue by more than £100million last year following its acquisition of Express Newspapers.

New figures showed income rose to £723.9million in 2018, with an adjusted profit before tax of £141.9million, both numbers up by 16 per cent year-on-year.

The company, formerly Trinity Mirror, also increased its cash pot for dealing with phone hacking cases by £12.5million last year.

It spent £9.6million of the more than £70million provision in 2018, with £13.6million remaining. The publisher has faced more than 100 civil claims for historical phone-hacking carried out on the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

Reach made an operating profit of £145.6million last year.

However, the company, which owns the Mirror, Express and Star titles plus the Sunday People, posted a pretax loss of £120million last year after writing down the value of its goodwill, publishing rights, titles and buildings, against a profit of £82million in 2017. Excluding the writedown, it made a profit of £141.9million.

According to its full-year accounts, the company is on track to deliver at least £20million of savings by 2020.

A further £20million in cuts was the result of “structural cost savings”.

Reach made up to 140 people redundant in its regional newsrooms in 2018 under its strategy of building separate print and digital regional teams, Press Gazette has reported.

The company’s net debt is at £40.8million, with a pension deficit of £348.6million.

In a statement alongside its accounts for the year, the company said: “Subject to there being no significant adverse implications arising from the UK’s exit from the European Union, we are confident that our strategy will enable continued progress to support profit and cash flow.”

Simon Fox, Reach chief executive, said: “I am pleased with the performance we have delivered in 2018 and encouraged by the stronger finish to the year.

“We have begun 2019 in a strong financial position with good momentum on the integration of Express and Star and with clear plans for digital growth.”

____________________

____________________

STEVE SNAPS HIS ANKLE

FASHION stops for no man as former Express photographer Steve Wood has proved.

Despite breaking an ankle, Steve grabbed a pair of crutches and struggled to the airport to catch his flight from London to Italy for Milan Fashion Week.

He was philosophical about his broken ankle, telling the Drone: “It has stopped me going skiing so it has saved me £300 a day. I would rather have been skiing but I broke it the day before I was due to go.”

____________________

Lower Thames Street 1905

As the Daily and Sunday Express news operation prepares to leave its Lower Thames Street offices in London for Canary Wharf here’s a pic of the road in 1905.

Lower Thames Street is just as busy then as now as carts queue to collect fish from Billingsgate Market on the left. This scene looks west with the spire of St Magnus the Martyr Church, which still nestles next to London Bridge, visible in the distance.

Lower Thames Street today with the old Billingsgate Market building on the left. The Express building is the grey structure further up

__________

LUDGATE CIRCUS,1926

Hold tight to your hats chaps, there's a General Strike on

A BUS operated by an independent company passes through Ludgate Circus at the foot of Fleet Street, London, crammed with passengers during the General Strike on 4 May, 1926

The 15A bus route ran until 1987 when it was merged with the 15 which still runs down Fleet Street.

Ex-editors and many others from across the newspaper spectrum descended on the party in Weybridge, Surrey.

Craig started as a sub on the Daily Express and went on to become deputy editor of the Daily and Sunday Express. He also edited titles for the Murdoch and Mirror groups.

He thanked guests who had made him welcome when he first arrived in Fleet Street.

Presenting him with a spoof Sun Page One, Piers Morgan paid tribute to his incredible loyalty.

He said whenever he had problems, Craig would be in the trenches alongside him.

Piers described him as "mad funny" and said he loved Craig's passion for life and work.

He added: "All the MacKenzies are like that. Everything at 100mph."

____________________

Marie Louise, vivacious star of William Hickey desk dies aged just 65

Marie Louise in 2015, left, and in the 1971 Coca-Cola ad

We are sad to report the death of Marie Louise Windeler, star of a famous 1971 Coca-Cola TV advert and a former secretary on the Daily Express William Hickey desk. She was 65.

Marie Louise, who had been suffering from dementia, was known as O’lene on the Express and has been described as “a joyous presence”. After she left the Express in the 1970s she had a glittering career in public relations.

She leaves a husband Henry, children Holly and Alice, two sisters Victoria and Juliette and a brother Rupert.

Donations to Race Against Dementia gratefully received at https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MarieLouiseWindeler

*The television commercial in which Marie Louise appeared was the groundbreaking “Buy the World a Coke" ad which became so popular that the New Seekers re-recorded it as the pop song I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony) which became a big hit in the UK and the US.

____________________

DAILY STAR MOVES TO CANARY WHARF

FINAL EDITION: The staff of the Daily Star in London posed for a final picture as they prepared their last edition in Lower Thames Street. They have now moved to the Mirror building in Docklands.

Note the mouse held aloft top left, a reference to the rodent problem in the LTS building.

The Daily and Sunday Express news operation, currently on the ground floor at Lower Thames Street, is also moving to Canary Wharf soon.

Mirror sport and the magazines will be switching in the opposite direction from Canary Wharf to the Express offices.

The Star and Express titles have been based in Lower Thames Street since 2004.

____________________

Spot the Expressman

FOUND HIM YET? Look closely and you will see Terry Chinery hard at work on the Luton News back in the 1970s. Terry, first left, went on to greater things and became Night News Editor on the Daily Express. And yes, that dagger in the foreground is his, we are reliably informed.

______________________

PALACE COMPLAINS TO REGULATOR

NEW CRISIS HITS MoS

OVER SNATCH PICS OF

THE QUEEN’S SHOOT

THE Mail on Sunday has run into more trouble under its new editor Ted Verity, the Daily Drone can reveal.

The paper rather naively ran pictures of the Queen out shooting with Jackie Stewart.

But the photographs were taken on private land which is not allowed without permission. This triggered a very rare complaint from Her Majesty.

The faux pas has resulted in the resignation of the Mail on Sunday’s picture editor Jack Culver.

An MoS insider told the Drone: “Royal hackles were already up following the Prince Philip crash debacle so naturally they were thrilled to be able to whack back.

“But the complaint was not made to Ted Verity direct from the Palace press office, but through IPSO [the Independent Press Standards Organisation], which Lord Rothermere will hate because it’s such a stupid mistake.

“Ted Verity bawled out the picture editor Jack Culver because the pics the MoS had of Prince Philip driving solo, after his car crash, were not exclusive.

“I believe the background to this is that they were taken by a freelancer, who warned at the point of sale he would be selling elsewhere and those were the terms on offer.

“As a result, Culver went in and resigned without waiting for a pay-off.

“How much longer will Verity last? But then they say that about The Donald.”

____________________

EXCLUSIVE

We find former deputy editor’s secret hideout

CLUE: The hideaway costs ‘pots' of money

____________________

Express mouse race

Bosses do nothing to clean up vermin on the news floor

This browser cannot play the embedded video file.

NIPPER: A mouse scurries around the desks in this footage captured by a member of the Express staff. BELOW: There goes another one just like the other one

THE Express offices are still infested with mice — despite the refurbishment being carried out by the building’s owner Richard Desmond.

The problem has existed for years and the Drone can confirm that it dates back to at least 2006 — but still the management has done nothing.

Staff are understandably fed up at conditions in the offices near London Bridge.

“It’s revolting,” one Express source told Buzzfeed News. “They are everywhere, and desks are covered in poo and pee each morning.

“They run around our feet constantly, mostly at night. And then when it’s quieter they’re up on the desks.

“There are fleas everywhere too.”

Journalists have even taken to setting up cameras to catch the mice. They’ve also repeatedly told management about the rodent problem.

“It’s unbearable to work in those conditions,” one reporter said. “The organisation demands an insane amount of work from its reporters, and gives zero fucks about making us work in inhumane conditions.”

Reach Plc, the new owners of the Express, has not replied to a request for comment.

Management has blamed staff for eating meals at their desks. “It’s a bloody intense newsroom,” an employee said. “There’s little time for breaks so we have no choice but to eat in the office.”

There is respite for the Express news teams at least as they will shortly move to join their Mirror colleagues at Canary Wharf.

The refurbishment is being carried out by the landlord Northern & Shell as it prepares for new tenants who would be reluctant to put up with conditions like this.

Scroll down the page for YOU DIRTY RATS!

___________________

Nestling amid the sylvan folds of the rolling English countryside, the Grade 1 listed mansion now known as DroneHaven welcomes journalists, particularly sub-editors, from the Daily Express and other Fleet Street publications who are facing their “final edition” with ageless style and aplomb.

The 300-year-old mansion has been skilfully converted into one and two bedroom self-contained six-star cottages and apartments all lovingly finished to an enviably high specification. This iconic retirement village boasts lounges, a bar, dining room and library. There are lawns and lakes and ample parking. A mini bus* is available to take guests into the nearby town where there are frequent trains to London.

The dedicated DroneCare staff have developed a series of residents’ activities aimed at Fleet Street’s finest. They include:

DroneDisco

A former Night Editor and local radio disc jockey leads music aficionados in what he calls The Vinyl Edition, listening to, and discussing, the hits and stars of yesteryear. Legends such as Connie Francis, Bobby Vee, Conway Twitter and the Big O. Our host will reveal fascinating facts about the icons he discusses. For instance, did you know what Chuck Berry was referring to when he sang about his dingaling? All meetings will feature state-of-the-art sound systems* and will close with our popular SingalongaTel karaoke sessions.

DroneDeadline

The group is given the chance to relive the glory days of Fleet Street sub-editors by helping to produce a genuine parish magazine (St Nicholas Church in the village) in real time against the clock. Guided by an experienced parish magazine editor, our “subs” will work on copy paper with a pen and use spikes, scissors and glue*. Crumpling up crap headlines, which have been rejected, and throwing them on the floor is encouraged as is randomly shouting “Stop the press!” “Hold the front page!” and “Cooking on gas!” These sessions traditionally end on “Press Day” with the “editor” shouting: “Make it sing!” and the “subs”replying in unison: “And make it a song I like!”

DroneGoss

Rememberthose Fleet Street days of salacious, scurillous scuttlebut? Whispers behind the hands? Secrets guaranteed to shock? These popular sessions are dedicated to the legendary Les Diver, the one-man rumour mill who coined the slogan “Goss is King; Goss is Power”. Your host is the Daily Drone’s resident royal expert, our very own PopBitch. He will pass on the very latest rumours from the Palace and Parliament. Be prepared to be teased and tormented.

The House of Drone wishes to thank the Press Association for its assistance in delivering this programme.

DroneDrink

In the evenings it’s time to slope down to the Bertie Brooks Memorial Bar for an attitude adjuster or two. Whatever the weather, gentlemen are expected to be in shirt sleeves as if they had just “gone to the library” or “popped to the loo”. Offering toasts is very much de rigeur in Bertie’s. Apart from the popular “To Wives And Girlfriends - May They Never Meet”, Drones often utter the memorable “Lagers Till We Lurch”, “Swans Till We Swoon”, and “Pils Till We Puke”.

Members of DroneDram*, our amateur dramatic and re-enactment team, will be on hand to assume the roles of famous Fleet Street characters. Mrs Moon will humiliate you by banning you from “Falstaff’s Dive Bar” and a sinister black-cloaked character will sweep in shouting: “Flood the bar!” Highlight, for some, is the florid, irascible Scotsman who pins you against the bar, invades your personal space and demands why the fuck he hasn’t been made Chief Sub.

More to come

Other programmes we are working on include DroneDown! in which “subs” compete for the Jack Atko trophy by being judged the best at asking for their copy to be delivered to the printer. A DroneDram* team member will act as Messenger Roger. DroneDrone enables residents to start their own beehives aided by apple-cheeked Mrs W* from the village. We have high hopes for DroneEscape in which the fitter members of our community form a Colditz-style Escape Committee and start to dig a tunnel, nicknamed Larry, under the West Wing bin store.

*Extra charge.

Your retirement dream

Find out more about DroneHaven by sending for our information pack containing detailed specifications, plans and photographs of our apartments and cottages as well as comprehensive costings. Write to: Drone Enterprises, House of Drone, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, KT12 1AD or visit our website www.dailydrone.co.uk

THE many friends and colleagues of star photographer John Downing are being urged to rally round him today.

John has been diagnosed with incurable lung cancer, according to his wife, the pianist Anita D'Attellis.

She said John was ill over Christmas, culminating in an

operation to remove liquid from his lung.

Anita added: "At the same time they took a biopsy, which sadly turned out rather bad news. He has a particularly virulent cancer, which is incurable. He’s in good spirits considering, and full of gallows humour.

"He's happy for you to mention it to any of his old colleagues, but would appreciate emails only, because he’s not up to taking phone calls at the moment."

John's great friend, Tom Smith, reported that the surgery John underwent last week at London Bridge Hospital will, in John’s own words, only "delay the inevitable a short time”.

He added: "Most of old-time Fleet Street and all of the London Welsh Choir have our fingers crossed. Please pass this on to all who knew him and worked with the 'best snapper of his time'.”

Understandably, John is not up to phone calls at the moment but Anita said you may contact him by email at jd@johndowning.co.uk

UPDATE

John writes in an email to friends:

The operation has gone well and will, I hope, extend my time a little longer. In fact I feel pretty good.

I am very lucky to have such a lovely wife Anita, who has been a true stalwart. I have had a great life full of excitement, fun and had the pleasure of befriending all of you. Throw in a handful of tablets each day (the most important of which is the morphine I suspect) and how could I fail to feel good.

In passing, watching two nurses trying to part me from my underpants whilst I was attached to tubes and wires would have had you in fits and would have made a great Jacques Tati film.

Well, must away and write a epitaph.

All the very best to you all, and thank you.

IS THERE MUCH MORE OF THIS? John Downing waits for reporter Kim Willsher to finish filing her story

BELOW: Downing documentary, 34:15 runtime

Downing's study of a young Sue McGibbon

FORMER Daily Express news sub Robin McGibbon is justly proud of this Downing photograph of his wife Sue taken when she was aged 17.

Robin told the Drone : "In the early 70s, my wife, Sue, worked at the Daily Express, selling classified advertising. Her boss was John's wife, Jeanette, who felt it would make the girls' regular sales calls more personal if clients knew what they they looked like.

"She primed John on each girls' personality and he chatted with each one — to relax them — before taking their photograph, which was stuck on compliments slips sent to prospective advertisers.

"The attached pic of Sue, aged 17, is displayed in our study, assuring that, for her, John will never be forgotten.”

_____________________

Legendary sports writer McIlvanney dies at 84

THE greatest sports writer of his generation, Hugh McIlvanney, has died at the age of 84.

McIlvanney spent most of his 60-year career with The Observer and The Sunday Times and worked briefly for the Daily Express.

He leaves a wife, Caroline, son Conn and daughter Elizabeth.

In 1996, McIlvanney was awarded the OBE, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award 2004 by The Scottish Press Awards, and is the only sports writer to be voted Journalist of the Year.

McIlvanney was great friends with fellow Scotsman Bill Montgomery, a Daily Express news sub who was never reluctant to give someone a thump whether they deserved it or not.

An Expressman who prefers to remain anonymous, recalls:

"I am reminded of the night I was chief sub and, for no reason, didn’t give Bill Monty a story. He thought he was getting the freeze. Later in the Press Club, Bill told me there was a call for me. Remember those phone booths in that dimly-lit hall?

"I went out and picked up the phone which was hanging off its hook. The line was dead. It was a set-up.

"I felt the grip of death on my throat. It was paranoid Monty, demanding to know who’d instructed me to give him the freeze. I couldn’t plead my innocence owing to asphyxiation.

"Just then Hugh McIlvanney appeared through the gloom. 'Need a hand there, Billy?' he said.

"You don’t forget moments like that.”

PATRICK COLLINS, sports writer and friend of McIlvanney’s summed up the man, saying: "When his countless admirers speak of Hugh’s writing, they recall the rolling phrases, the astute insights, the dramatic sense of occasion.

"But those who worked with him — and especially the heroic subs who placed paragraph marks on his copy — will tell of the tireless perfectionist, the man whose Sunday would be spoiled by a misplaced comma or a wayward colon.”

ALAN HILL, former Express Chief City Sub, writes: One of my former bosses, Roy Mackie, City Editor of the Daily Express for some years, was a good friend of Hugh McIlvanney’s. I spent many a convivial night in their company, usually in The Old Bell.

My friend Iain Murray, formerly of Daily Express features and The Observer, told a Hughie story some years ago.

Hugh was becoming a wee bit stressed by someone in the pub. Seeing what was coming our good friend Bill Montgomery placed his hand on the back of Hugh’s neck.

The squeeze on the McIlvanney neck was said to be tighter than a Scotsman’s grip on a tenner. And it was accompanied by Bill, saying in his warmest Glaswegian tones: “Now Hugh, we’ll nae be havin any of your nonsense tonight.”

Iain claims Hugh’s feet came off the floor.

Calm was restored. And as Roy Mackie said: “Strong drink was taken, and we all went home good friends.”

ROGER WATKINS:I was a features sub in Manchester in 1972 when a newly-appointed McIlvanney came into the office to write up a featuremin time for the first edition. He was taciturn and uncommunicative and I recall thinking at the time that he did not seem happy to be on the World’s Greatest Newspaper and, especially, not to be camping in a branch office wrestling with a battered Olympia.

When his copy came I’d like to say I subbed it with all the attention of a Cliff Barr or a Roy Povey but, to be honest, I didn’t sub it at all.

JIM DAVIES: The fully-deserved paeans of praise for the work of Hugh Mcilvanney prompted some fond memories of our time together. When he — I thought inadvisably — came back to the Express in the early Seventies (he had been on the Scottish Daily Express earlier in his career), we were having a jar or six in The Old Bell.

I said the Express was a tightly-subbed paper which might fit ill with the lengths he had been accustomed to at The Observer. "I decide what a piece is worth," he said with what, in anyone else would have sounded like rank pomposity.

I teased him. "I doubt they have a type face small enough so what do they do?” 'They hang it in a strip below the page,' he said with a look that almost challenged anyone to disagree.

His return to the Beaverbrook fold was not a match made in heaven and did not last. But happily it did not derail an illustrious career the like of which I doubt we will see again.

Hughie and I were both among the class of '34 who arrived in Fleet Street in the late 50s and early 60s and, sadly, we are a rapidly dwindling bunch. But boy, did we have the best of it!

ANOTHER body blow has been dealt to Express staff after plans were announced to halve jobs on the Sunday paper.

The move, which reduces staff numbers to less than 10 follows cuts under Mirror publisher Reach, which bought the Express and Star titles last year as part of a £128m deal.

Sunday Express Martin Townsend, who was sacked last year after 17 years, has not been replaced.

In another development, Reach has confirmed the Daily and Sunday Express news teams will move to join the Mirror at Canary Wharf while the Mirror sport desk and magazine and supplement teams will be based at the Express offices at Lower Thames Street.

Several senior journalists have left the Sunday Express, including arts editor Clair Woodward, picture editor Jim Selby and a news reporter, according to Press Gazette.

The paper’s assistant editor James Murray and diarist Adam Helliker have both moved over to the Daily Express, while travel editor Jane Memmler has been appointed deputy travel editor for the whole group.

Following the departure of Martin Townsend, who left to join a PR firm last August, the paper has been edited by Michael Booker in his role as weekend editor and deputy editor.

One source said: “The paper is run by a sort of communist committee of [Express editor] Gary [Jones] at the top, deputy [editor] Caroline Waterston and under them is Michael Booker.”

There are rumours of another wave of redundancies in April, with the Sunday Express potentially to be further affected.

The source predicted the “virtual amalgamation” of the Daily and Sunday Express and said Mirror journalists would also increasingly be writing for the Express when news teams occupy the same building.

The atmosphere in the newsroom is still toxic. “Express staff very much feel second best to Mirror and People employees.”

The source added: “No-one can quite work out what the game plan is. It’s very odd to have bought the whole thing and shave all the talent off. It makes for a homogenous group of papers with no real character.”

Another source said: “The old Mirror people come first. There aren’t many Express people left who have an executive role – they have got rid of them now.

“The Sunday Express is losing its identity and that’s a bit of a shame. The new management are trying to keep their readership, but they don’t understand what it is. How many more interviews with Joan Collins can you have?

“Sunday papers need a particular identity and when all the teams merge as one we lose that.

“Although I didn’t love the Sunday Express’ politics, it did have an arm around the shoulder flavour. It’s now going for these fear stories. Older readers want something a bit nicer than that.” ____________________

ONLY IN THE DRONE

Mail on Sunday ‘stole’ Mirror’s royal exclusive

SENIOR journalists at the Mail on Sunday are in despair after alleged blatant plagiarism at the paper.

The entire Page 3 of this week's edition of the MoS was apparently a straight lift of the Sunday Mirror’s splash about the woman who broke her wrist when her car was in collision with Prince Philip’s Land Rover.

Our mole at Northcliffe House said staff had their heads in the hands over the incident and that the Sunday Mirror plans to bill MoS editor Ted Verity for the story.

An unconfirmed report claims that the woman who sold the tale to the Sunday Mirror went first to the Daily Mail and asked how much they would pay.

They gave a price which she agreed before being told: 'We'll call back you in the morning’. Exasperated, she took her story to the Mirror who snapped her up.

Our informant told the Drone: ‘I seem to remember that in the old days it was always a case of 'grab the body and get it away.

'How times change.’

____________________

.

____________________

An exciting new game, only in your non-stop, devil-may-care super soarway Daily Drone

Calm down, calm down, two decks would have done on this — Ed

DroneMart offer £1.39* a bag

* p&p £79.99

____________________

Meltdown on Sunday

THINGS are going from bad to worse at the Mail On Sunday with editor Ted Verity under pressure following the axing of star columnist Tina Weaver.

Weaver's removal was ordered by Lord Rothermere following revelations that she masterminded phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror while she was editor.

Verity is already facing a costly lawsuit for referring to the couple wrongly arrested for the Gatwick drones chaos as morons in a splash headline.

Our informant at Northcliffe House says morale at the MoS is at rock-bottom because staff had been accustomed to the gentlemanly ways of former editor Geordie Greig. Under Verity they now find themselves back to the bad old days of Paul Dacre.

Weaver’s reported involvement in the phone-hacking scandal was revealed exclusively by the news website Byline.

A source told Byline: 'This is already being seen as a humiliation for Ted Verity and leaves a big question mark on his judgment. The decision to get rid of Weaver was made by the paper's top executives last Saturday.

'When they hired her, they knew there were some skeletons left over from her years at Mirror Group Newspapers. But until Byline's stories came out, they did not know the full extent of Weaver's involvement in the phone-hacking scandal.

'It was abundantly obvious they had scored a big own goal. Reluctantly, but inevitably, they had to let her go.'

But listing those who have departed this earth is sobering. Lloyd Q Turner, William Q Reynolds, Leslie Q Diver, Robert Q Kilby and William Q Montgomery to name just a few.

How many others are still out there today?

If they’re readers of this mighty organ, perhaps we could be told?

Yours as ever,

Anthony Q Boullemier.

PS: Dougie never did tell us what the Q was meant to stand for.

IAIN Q MURRAY may have the explanation.

He writes: I suspect that Dougie, whom I fondly recall from my brief spell in DX features, was enjoying a mischievous private joke.Q was the pen name of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch (1863-1944), editor of the Oxford Book of English Prose and a series of Cambridge lectures published as On the Art of Writing.

He coined the writers’ maxim ‘murder your darlings’.

“If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it— whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

It would have amused Dougie to see the subs as discerning assassins hired to butcher purple prose.

This from RICK Q McNEILL:

I recall Dougie Orgill also used occasionally to address lowly subs as Shufflebottom and Aloysius — as in “Anthony Aloysius Armstrong, your past has caught up with you!”

DOUGIE THE WAR HEROBy JIM Q DAVIES

When Dougie Orgill was brutally sacked as chief sub he found himself deposited in features where I lived. I barely knew him but attempted to commiserate. 'Nonsense, dear boy,' he said. ‘It's out of the kitchen and into the restaurant.'

That lovely piece of insouciance began a friendship which lasted for several memorable years until his early death at the age of 63.

Dougie was an expert in some pretty diverse fields from tank warfare to butterfly collecting, a constant source of entertaining stories and a joy to lunch with — especially in El Vino where he loved my embarrassment at being made to wear a tie, usually one of Geoffrey Van Hay's gravy-stained numbers.

During the advance through Italy in early 1944 Dougie's tank was knocked out by a German shell and his crew surrounded and told they would be shot. Bravely, Dougie told the Panzers that they could shoot him as commander but that his men must be taken prisoner under the terms of the Geneva convention.

Into this crisis charged a German officer, ironically the same rank as Dougie, who ordered the German troops away and apologised saying his men had sustained days of aerial bombardment and were stressed out of their minds.

He explained that he had no facilities for taking prisoners and told Dougie and his men to stay by their stricken tank until the Allied advance caught up with them. 'This war will be over very soon,' he said by way of farewell.

Dougie congratulated him on his perfect English and asked where he had learned it. ‘Oxford,' said the German. 'Which college?" asked Dougie. ‘Balliol,’ said Herr Maior. 'Me too,' said Dougie, upon which they exchanged names and addresses and promised to get in touch when the war was over.

Dougie fulfilled the promise only to find out that his generous combatant had been killed within days of their battlefield meeting.

I can't settle Tony Boullemier's query about Q any more than I could ever discover why he always called me Soulberry.

I am, though, proud to say that I was invited by his family to give the address at his funeral at St Bride's where, to his undoubted celestial amusement, I did not wear a tie!

Good to know there are still those of us around who remember this great man. Best to everyone, Jim.

____________________

CHAPMAN’S PARTING SHOT AS HE QUITS THE EXPRESSPrivate Eye reports:

Veteran Daily Express hack John Chapman, who refers to himself as a “Fleet Street survivor” having stuck with the paper through its Desmond doldrums and on to the new Mirror-managed era, left last month with an old-school retirement party at El Vino.He had an admirable valedictory message for his assembled colleagues: “I have witnessed the slow, sad decline of a once-great newspaper … but I was earning an old-style Fleet Street salary so I don’t give a fuck.”

____________________

MARTIN HOLDS COURT

Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend, left, holds a riverside conference with deputy editor Dick Dismore, right, and Andy Hoban at the Lower Thames Street offices in London some time in the mid-Noughties.

____________________TYPICAL SCENE AT STAMMIES

Stamfords Wine Bar was the favoured watering hole for Daily Express journalists in the 1990s and early Noughties, mainly because it was but a short lurch from the Blackfriars offices.

STAMMIES again in a snap provided by MIKE HUGHES, who is on the far left. Also pictured are Chris Williams, John Twomey, personal finance writer Jessica Bown, and Luke Felton, who is sadly no longer with us.

____________________

ONLY HERE FOR THE LEER

WHO'S that woman with Expressman Ashley Walton? And why does he have that devilish look on his face?

We do not know … but we think we should be told.

This picture of Margaret Thatcher with the Drone’s chief reporter comes from the BBC TV programme Icons.

Walton explained yesterday: 'The shot was taken somewhere in the UK during Mrs Thatcher's first election campaign in 1979 before she became Prime Minister.

'I covered the whole three weeks of the campaign travelling the length of the UK and having a great time. It was certainly the most gruelling three weeks of my life. Where did all that hair come from? Mine not hers.'

He added: 'Now I know what it feels like to be a legend in my own lunchtime.’

____________________

YOUR STARTER FOR 10 PINTS

Guess who trousered the redundo jackpot?

All three of them!

This charming study of Daily Express features subs Norman ‘Normal' Cox, Dave ‘Squiffy’ Searby and Mike ‘Trouser’ Snaith shows them at a lunch to celebrate their redundancy in the 1980s.

Yes folks, thanks to excellent contracts, journalists once rejoiced in getting the sack, as JEFF BOYLE explains in the …

IF ever there was a decade for partying on the Daily Express it must have been the 1980s — and here is the proof.

Pictured at a Roaring Twenties evening are, from left, the late and much lamented Ross ‘Crommers’ Tayne, Robin McGibbon and his wife Sue, and Jan Barden who hosted the party at her home in Penge, South-East London.

____________________

HOORAY FOR PINKY!

ONE of the great features of the old Daily and Sunday Express was the people. And one of the most cheerful was Peter ‘Pinky’ Floyd of the Picture Desk. A truly lovely man, here he is in 1998, lighting up the SX picture desk in Fleet Street with his radiant good humour.

____________________

A quiet Saturday night on the Sunday Express

Here’s another snap from the old days, this time at the Sunday Express offices in Lower Thames Street, London, circa 2005.

On the far left is Tessa Evans, then Roy Povey arriving in his overcoat. In the distance, trying to mind his own business, is Alastair McIntyre, then from left on the middle bench is Mark Hoey, Rod Jones, Brian Izzard and on the backbench, Andy Hoban.

____________________

I had that Tim Shipman in the back of the cab ...

You know the feeling, you’ve had an enjoyably heavy lunch and then, in the cab back to the office, the news desk calls, jolting you back to reality.

This was Sunday Express politico Tim Shipman back in the day, trying to sound lucid after a liquid lunch at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, London. An amused Andy Hoban looks on.

_____________________

MORE FLEET STREET FUN

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES: Daily Express features subs having fun in their break some time in the 1990s are Elaine Canham, Norman ‘Normal’ Cox and Jeff ‘Mine’s a Toby Light’ Boyle. The blonde in the foreground is features desk secretary-cum-nurse Alison Greenacre, who, according to one member of staff, 'dispensed our morning hangover cures’.

_____________________

Mrs Stumpy’s dog car(t)

A message arrives in a forked stick from ROBIN McGIBBON.

He writes: A girl, aged no more than four, was walking by our bungalow, with her mother, when she spotted blankets in the back of the pictured Perodua Kenari, which my wife, Sue, uses to take friends' dogs for walks.

As one of the shortest subs ever to work for the Express, I'm wondering if I should seek your permission to start driving it!

Lord Drone replies: On yer bike, Stumpy!

____________________

Muldoon’s Lookalike

ESSEX McINTYRE

Can it be? Surely not. How is it that the world has only just noticed that the acting-singing heart-throb David Essex and our very own Drone clan chief Lord Bingo McIntyre of that Ilk bear more than a superficial passing resemblance? They’re not related of course: one’s quite high born, actually and the other is, at best, of artisan stock.

Essex, OBE, a man of undistinguished looks, has made good through his showbiz talent. He almost became a professional footballer, though and was on West Ham’s books as a lad. He famously refused to answer a single question in his 11-plus so that he could attend a local secondary modern renowned for its footie prowess.

Lord B, the better looking of the two, comes from an ancient Highland clan (war cry: Flodden the bar!). The name McIntyre is from the Gaelic Mac an t-Saoir meaning son of the carpenter. The clan’s historic seat may have been Glen Noe in Argyll and Bute but it is now Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. The chief is in pretty good form considering he has been on a slippery slope (geddit?) for years.

I’ll get you for this, Muldoon — Ed

______________________________________

THE SLIPPERY SLOPER

WHERE’S HE GONE? Jon Zackon tears his hair out as a thirsty Kipper Keeling slips out to the pub again

ONE of the great legends of the old Fleet Street Daily Express in the 1970s and 80s was Ted ‘Kipper’ Keeling who, although an excellent news sub-editor, was mostly noted for his ability to slope off to the pub in a cloud of cannabis fumes without the Chief Sub noticing.

Reading on the Drone of Kipper’s exploits, former sub Nick Pigott climbed into his loft to retrieve this sketch he drew at the time of Assistant Chief Sub Jon Zackon tearing his hair out as his nemesis slipped out to the pub.

Charlie Sale, former Daily Express sports sub and latterly sports columnist on the Daily Mail has announced his retirement on Twitter.

His decision to quit follows the exodus of several star names following the appointment of Geordie Greig as editor to replace Paul Dacre. It is not thought that Charlie’s retirement is connected with this.

Last night after more that 200 Twitter tributes to Charlie, he tweeted: "Absolutely overwhelmed by all the kind messages today re retirement. Even the trolls were nice. Thanks so much.”

One fan tweeted: "Charlie, many congratulations on your recovery. Yet another foe bested, though I’m sorry you’re leaving the circuit; you’ll leave a gap that’s impossible to fill. An absolute doyen of journalism and cantankerous harrumphery. Retiring now, maybe, but you’ll never be ‘irrelevant’.”

On the Express, Charlie rose from sub to No 3 and was a candidate for sports editor when David Emery was short-listed for deputy editor on the Sunday Express, but SX editor Eve Pollard opted for Craig Mackenzie.

LATEST gossip from Northcliffe House reveals that a memo from the Mail’s managing editor informing all staff of the details for Victor Davis’s funeral was sent to everyone — including Victor Davis! Well, he WAS there…

Our informant had a long chat with a Mail insider who said the troops were very distressed at the way the Daily Mail has lost its edge under Greig. Our mole compared it to the emasculation of the Express.

THE DRONE is indebted to Popbitch for the following titbit in its review of the year:

After nearly three decades of steering the ship, Paul Dacre stepped down as the Daily Mail's editor.

Once in a morning conference Dacre interrupted a journalist talking about the female fighter pilots who were going into Libya to ask: "What? Actually flying the planes? And shooting? Not just navigating? Or giving directions?"

The reporter informed him that, yes, the women would be flying fighter jets.

Dacre mulled this over for a hot second, before asking: "Won't their tits get in the way of the steering?”

_______________________________________

HOW THE EXPRESS DID IT IN STYLE IN THE EARLY 1950s

These two images are taken from from a style book entitled The Express Way issued to staff in Manchester and Glasgow in the 1950s, writes BOB CUMMINGS.

The pamphlet contains such gems as:

THE CRITICS

Advice to the critics: They should not assume too much knowledge on the part of the reader. It is their job to give information to the reader in such a way as not to offend the erudite and not patronise the ignorant. (April 1, 1953).

Whenever possible print a woman's age. That's a fine paragraph in today's Diary about Lady Helena Hilton-Green who flies to the hunt — but I wanted to know how old she was (March 31, 1953).

Here, in glorious black and white, is another trip down memory lane. This pic of Sport and General Press Agency staff was taken at the retirement in 1980 of John Macnee, centre standing. Back row, fourth from left, is Tony Sapiano.

This snap, provided by David Eliades, shows the Express newsroom in London some time in the early 1960s.

In the foreground is foreign sub Jack Atkinson and next to him in his customary white shirt is splash sub Peter Hedley. The man to Hedley’s left on the middle bench is Ted Hodgson who later became night editor.

Opposite Jack is Ken Macaulay and next to him is Ralph Mineards.

The man seated under the pillar in the white shirt and dark tie, is Eric Price. This would date the pic as before 1962 as Price left the Express that year to join the Western Daily Press in Bristol.

The backbench is the long desk on the left, second left is Bob Edwards, (the only man to be made editor of the Express twice) next to him is Eric Raybould and Morris Benett.

Thanks to TONY BOULLEMIER and ROGER WATKINS for help with this caption.

RICK McNEILL reports: I would date the picture pre-1965, before I joined. I recognise those you mention but others are unknown to me.

I think the man in the far right background, on the telephone, is picture supremo Frank Spooner and the man seated looking up at him Jim Nicholl. I seem to recall the picture desk and foreign desk shared the same space around then.

Facing Ted Hodgson is Welshman Harold Jones wearing his signature cardigan, look you. Apart from Morris and Raybould the Backbench is populated by strangers. I’d love to know who they are!

ALAN HILL, Chief City Sub from 1968 to 1996, who identified Bob Edwards, recalls: Bob gave me my job on the Express City staff. When I arrived, six weeks later, he had gone … again!

I believe he sacked Frank Spooner in the morning. Frank’s staff took him for a long lunch and when he returned to clear his desk … Bobbity had been sacked himself. Frank continued as Picture Editor for years.

Click pic to enlarge

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

SIR — How nice to see a photograph of my late father, Ralph Mineards, deputy father of the Daily Express chapel, in your illustrious organ.

When he retired in 1979, getting the honor of being "banged out" by the printers, he estimated he had travelled more than a million miles commuting from his Northampton home to London Euston, whiling away his hour-long ride doing the Times crossword.

I always remember him telling me that when he sat on the committee that helped launch the Daily Star, its audience was considered "the Millwall supporter who rolls his own cigarettes”.

An extremely capable journalist and wonderful father.

I followed in his footsteps as an Express trainee on the Falmouth Packet, where my colleagues included Nick Coleridge, now the head of Conde Nast UK, before joining Paul Callan's Inside World on the Mirror and then moving to Nigel Dempster's Diary on the Mail, leaving for the U.S. as an editor on New York Magazine, eventually becoming an anchor for CBS and a commentator on ABC News.

I have now lived in Santa Barbara for 11 years, where I write a weekly column for the Montecito Journal.

RICHARD MINEARDS_______________________________________

Seven in pub heaven

Seven of the best — that’s this group of erstwhile Daily Express sub-editors who met at their old haunt of the King’s Arms in Roupell Street, London on December 5.

They look glum but these Daily Express women were in fact putting on an act. They were actually having fun, mourning the death of the paper’s William Hickey gossip column.

Back in 1987, the Express decided to replace the long-dead diarist with a real person in the shape of Ross Benson. Fleet Street gossip columnists led by the Daily Mail’s Nigel Dempster held a mock funeral for Hickey whose name was revived following Benson’s death.

This picture is supplied by Kim Willsher, second left, with Louise Court on her right.

SIR — On a flying visit to London recently I took my family for dinner at the new Joe Allen, fondly expecting to wallow nostalgically in its uniquely cool and quietly clubbable atmosphere.

Imagine my surprise (as they say) to find myself in a overcrowded characterless bistro full of shouting tourists off the street and an expensive menu with little to remind me of its bygone Exeter Street heyday. Even the signature cheesecake tasted like Tesco’s!

Perhaps you chaps have a different perspective at your regular get-togethers there. Probably it’s the company not the place? Maybe also night times are a no-no. Too close to the Strand.

Stan McMurtry, better known as Mac of the Daily Mail, has now surpassed Carl Giles of the Daily and Sunday Express as the longest-serving cartoonist on a national newspaper, serving from 1968 to 2018, reports Tim Benson of the Political Cartoon Gallery in Putney.

Mac has now retired from the Mail and has been replaced by Paul Thomas.

Giles, who died in 1995, drew his last cartoon for the Express in 1989.

There’s a few familiar faces in this pic of the London Evening Standard backbench in, at a guess, the 1970s. In the background gazing into the middle distance is Chris ‘Duke’ Djukanovic, later to become picture editor of the Daily Express.

Seated on the right is Charles Wintour, famed editor of the Standard, and next to him in the striped shirt is Roy Wright, who later became the editor of the Daily Express before disappearing without trace.

PETER STEWARD has filled in the gaps. He writes:

I believe the picture was taken before I joined the Standard (in the long hot summer of 1976) and for some reason I think it was a pre-Budget meeting. At that time the Evening Standard was part of the Beaverbrook empire and housed in Shoe Lane.

As you say, to the left of Charles Wintour is Roy Wright who returned to the Standard while I was there. I think he was deputy editor when Simon Jenkins was fired and Wintour returned for a short time before Lou Kirby arrived and Associated took half a share in the paper.

Seated centre is Bill Sharp, the splash sub.The chap back left in beard and specs is Cyril Raper, who enjoyed a White Shield Worthington. I think he was once chief sub, but during my time there he was like an executive revise sub.

In those days subs sent copy direct to the printers below via a conveyor belt down the middle of the desk and a hole in the floor. The first opportunity to get it revised was when galley proofs arrived upstairs or when the stone sub got a chance to read it.

On the left is the legendary political editor Bob Carvel (with pipe) and Michael King.

Perhaps the person furthest right could be David Henshall.

I left the Standard on December 29 1983 after being kidnapped in the Poppinjay by the sweet-talking Terry Manners. I was working a five-day week as the Standard's chief sub at the time but Terry held out the prospect of a four-night week for more money.

Six months later Mr Manners showed me the way to the escape tunnel (or perhaps he regretted tempting me in the first place) and I left to join the Sunday Express under that dynamic liberal editor Sir John Junor.

The faces look familiar to anyone who was on the Daily Express in the 1970s and 80s. But who are these two youngsters? The answers are here

______________________________________________________

Day the long Fleet Street lunch died

COLIN DUNNE, a former feature writer for The Sun and Daily Mirror, has written a superbly nostalgic piece in Press Gazette about the death of the Fleet Street long lunch. It will ring a distinct bell for many readers of the Daily Drone.

Dunne’s story inevitably involves Kelvin (no surname needed) storming around the office trying to get his staff out of licensed premises.

The Drone’s own ASHLEY WALTON has a similar recollection. He reports: Shortly after Kelvin left the Express to edit The Sun I was taking a lunchtime glass in the Wine Press and joined four Sun reporters who were all sitting at the bar with one eye on the window and Bouverie Street.

In the middle of some convivial chat the foursome suddenly fled from their stools and disappeared into the back of the bar. Kelvin came through the door and joined me at the bar.

After about half an hour of picking my brains about life on the Express he stood up to leave. At the door he turned round ... 'Oh by the way can you tell those cunts in the bog to come back to the office.’

I went to the gents, there was no sign of them but four closed doors. Looking underneath the doors, nothing to see, so I shouted: 'He knows you are here!’

The foursome got down from the toilet bowls and fled to the office — but not without finishing their drinks still on the bar.

There was a good deal of late evening merriment going on, too, at around that time, not least at the Mirror.

On one famous occasion chief sub Vic Mayhew rolled back from Barney's about 20 minutes after the last bell to be confronted angrily by night editor Mark Kahn.

1899: Carter’s Hair Cutting Saloon, at 17 Fleet Street, London, just opposite Chancery Lane. The facade above the gateway, which leads to Inner Temple, hid the original 17th Century half-timbered front which was subsequently restored.

The first floor of the building comprises Prince Henry’s Room, named for the son of James I. It is one of the few surviving buildings in the City of London dating from before the Great Fire of London in 1666. It is a Grade II listed building.

__________________________________________________ Hold the front stage! It’sChristiansen the film star

1961: Legendary Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen demonstrates that as an actor he was a very fine journalist playing himself in the cult sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

Chris, pictured with Edward Judd who played a maverick reporter (aren’t they all? — Ed), spent most of the time spouting lines like: “Hold the front page!” and “Make it sing and make it a song I like,” (or was that another legendary Daily Express editor?)

The film was based on the Express in its heyday and many shots were filmed in the office and Fleet Street. Behind the scenes there was also rumoured to have been a piquant play within a play starring an Express executive (still there in the seventies) and the luscious female lead Janet Munro, who, after a hard day’s filming, were encountered discussing bold intros and splash heads in the lane behind the Old Bell (mem to Night Lawyer Cocklecarrot: It’s OK: they’re both dead now)

MULDOON

______________________________________________

We think this may be a pic of the Express subs

but could it be the Mail?

This fascinating pic of sub-editors in, at a guess, the 1950s has been taken from the website of Hugh Dawson, who was chief sub and production editor of the Daily Mail for more than 40 years. Hugh, pictured right, died aged 73 on 24 June after a long fight against motor neurone disease. He started in journalism on the sports desk of The Journal, Newcastle, in 1962 and left the Daily Mail in 2010. He also worked on the Hemel Hempstead Post and Echo.

Hugh identified the picture as of the Daily Express. That being the case, we think the man on the far right of the pic is Dan McDonald.

"Also the room, windows, ceiling lights and clock on the pillar are wrong — the Black Lubyanka subs’ room I joined in the mid-1960s looked nothing like this and was unchanged since at least before the war.

"Maybe the real mystery is why Hugh Dawson mistakenly identified the picture on his website? He was after all Mail chief sub for yonks.

"I’m happy to be proved wrong, however.”

Chris Chalke, an Express news sub in the 1970s, wondered if the picture is in fact of the Daily Express in Manchester. Dan McDonald was a Scot so he could well have worked there before moving down to London.

Roger Watkins has his doubts too. "I don’t think that’s the Daily Express. When I moved to Fleet Street from Manchester in the seventies the back bench was parallel to Fleet Street facing north (it later turned 180 degrees when it moved to be closer to the news desk).

"In Hugh’s picture there are windows behind the back bench. For that to be the Express they would have to be on the Shoe Lane wall (where the art desk and reporters were situated when we left the Lubyanka)

"Unlikely, especially when you consider there was a huge supporting pillar (by which the Manchester Desk sat) which would have been in the middle of the subs desk.

"I don’t know much about lookalikes but I think Rick’s right about Dan.”

Last night further forensic examination of the photo throws up more doubts. Could the pic date from the 1930s?

Rick said: "Since when did subs (Mail or Express) ever look so respectfully buttoned up with suits and ties and Ernest Bevin specs? Pre-war I reckon."

The idea of launching a public relations company in a desert country where they’d never heard of PR, especially when you couldn’t speak the language and had no experience in that business, might seem more like insanity than entrepreneurial vision. But that’s exactly what former Express sub IAN BAIN did in the United Arab Emirates.

After an understandably shaky start, he built it into one of the biggest consultancies of its kind in the Middle East with clients that included General Motors, Airbus, Intel, Samsung, Emirates Airline and many others.

At the time, Ian was well used to risk-taking, having been a reporter, a merchant seaman, a big-time booze smuggler in India, and Buenos Aires correspondent of the Express and The Economist — all before the age of 24.

How he achieved success without the benefit of an education (he attended nine schools in 10 years and was thrown out at the age of 15 without a single exam pass) is beautifully described in his memoirs, Singing in the Lifeboat, available on Amazon.

Amid a multitude of other adventures, the book relates how Ian battled alcoholism, checking himself into a psychiatric clinic in Dubai where he was shocked to find patients handcuffed to the water pipes, and guards with batons. “It wasn’t the kind of rehab I’d had in mind,” he said.

"I'm grateful to a few of my old Express colleagues who read the manuscript and produced some lovely words for the covers," he added.

"Right now I'm trying to figure out how Amazon's sales charts work. With pre-orders alone, the book hit No 1 in UAE history and No 1 in motor rallying when these subjects are only loosely connected. Of course, that's only on one particular day but not everyone knows that.”

Former Daily Star sub Jeff Connor, pictured front right, sent this snap of the paper’s Sports Desk in Manchester circa 1980 before they moved to new offices.

Pictured, second left, is sports editor Arthur Lamb, to his left is deputy sports editor Gordon ‘Geordie’ Burnett (long departed), the secretary was named Sue. In the background between Gordon and Jeff is the backbench with deputy night editor Chris Davis, later Royston Davis, who went to The Sun, and leaning over him is copy editor Mike Hughes.

Next to Chris is night editor Andy (mine’s a Bell’s and a light ale) Carson, then Ian Pollock. On the extreme left is Jack Ronnie (probably). Also on the backbench is Robbie Addison.

To the left of Chris Davis is Ian Pollack and standing is a guy called Robbie who we think was deputy to editor Peter Grimsditch. Behind secretary Sue is the DS newsdesk. Thanks to Mike Hughes and John Edgley for help in identifications.

THE history of the Daily and Sunday Express as told 30 years ago through the columns of Private Eye (Lord Drone does not necessarily agree with the sentiments expressed although, from memory, they seem reasonably accurate.)

New readers: The Eye referred to the Express as the Getsworse, the Getsmuchworse, or the Getsevenworse or sometimes even worse than that.

UPDATED 27 JANUARY

25 July 1986

Street of Shame

When an Englishman was sentenced to hang in Malaysia for drug-running, the Getsmuchworse swiftly dispatched ace newshound Norman Luck to cover the pleas for clemency, death-cell agony and grisly end. Unfortunately the grisly end took rather a long time coming.

Worried about the cost of this jaunt, the Getsmuchstingier’s news desk ordered the luckless Luck to return home. While he was in midair, though, it became clear that the editor, “Nick” Lloyd — who had not been told of Luck’s imminent return — wanted him to remain in Kuala Lumpur.

In panic, the news desk decided to keep the return of the prodigal wordsmith secret. As soon as he touched down on home soil he was whisked off to a hideaway and continued filing stories as if he was still in Malaysia.

Thus it was that a series of graphic eyewitness accounts of the days leading up to the hanging which appeared in the Express under the byline “from Norman Luck in Kuala Lumpur” actually came from no further afield than Tunbridge Wells where Luck was holed up in a luxurious flat while involved in discussions of a Malaysian nature.

19 September 1986

Street of Shame

Just as United boss David Stevens removes one source of sleaziness, Roger Boyes, so another pops up. Fleet Street's most repulsive yob Ray Mills, now has a column in the Star.

Eye readers will remember Mills from issue 635, in which his habit of peeing in office wastepaper baskets, to the distress of cleaners, was disclosed. Mills’s new column is the journalistic equivalent of peeing in public.

At the Star he is known to one and all as BIFFO — Big Ignorant Fucker From Oldham.

The most recent Mills story involves his teenage son who, trying to please the elderly delinquent, baked him a birthday cake. Mills threw the cake at the lad’s head, shouting: “Are you a queer or something?”

3 October 1986

Street of Shame

When word was brought to dynamic Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie that Pat Phoenix was dead, his reaction was swift. “Get Doris Stokes[a clairvoyant]on the phone,” he screamed at a subordinate. “I want the first interview from the other side.”

A few minutes later the trembling subordinate reported back. La Stokes said that it took some time for for the spirit to move from earthly form. Even with her talents she could not yet make contact with the departed star.

“Well tell her to make it up,” shrieked MacFrenzie.

14 November 1986

“Hindley Freedom Move” screamed the Daily Getsmuchworse on Monday, labelling the story as “exclusive”. Its gullible readers were informed that Myra Hindley was to be sent to an open prison, and there were assorted quotes expressing the appropriate shock horror.

The Home Office denied the story as being untrue, for a very good reason — it was.

Step forward yet again Mr Michael Rocco Ryan who, posing as a prison nurse on escort duty, conned the gullible hacks. They can, however, almost be forgiven — for Rocky has become more sophisticated in the last twelve months. He has a fun-loving female accomplice who leads the hacks into his traps.

28 November 1986

Blood is running in the gutters at the Sunday Express, following the takeover by new Editor Robin Esser and his personally-appointed deputy Brian Hitchen.

Assistant Editor James Kinlay, once touted as the next editor, finishes at the end of the month. Photo editor John Dove has been given his cards and finishes up at the same time. Foreign editor Terry Foley returned from sick leave to be told he was no longer needed and has moved out of his office.

The latest office notice board announcement is the demotion of News Editor Michael Dove to reporter, apparently for his remark in the Poppinjay pub: “Brian Hitchen wouldn’t know a news story if it was shoved up his nose. He’s a beer-bellied idiot.”

“Inspector” Michael Watts has been axed after 27 years on the paper after telling Esser: “You can’t change the character of my column, old boy. I won’t stand for it.”

Travel editor Lewis de Fries has been chopped and now the Esser/Hitchen Punch and Judy act have turned their sights on Features Editor Max “Fuhrer” Davidson because of his continual complaining within the office: “All I get are inane features from Esser’s talentless Yuppie friends and Hitchen’s old drunken American-based cohorts.”

Assistant editor Ted Dickinson has been told to leave because when Esser tried to get back on the Daily Express after the closure of the Evening News he wrote a memo, still on file, reading: “On no account should Esser be given a job. He’s a total incompetent.”

Assistant editor Henry Macrory has been demoted to News Editor and one of his deputies, Ted Gartell, leaves at the end of November after being axed. Political editor Keith Renshaw has volunteered for early retirement at Christmas.

So of all departmental heads, that leaves just Diary Editor Lady Olga Maitland. The terrible duo backed off at the last minute when she befriended and started lunching with Lady Stevens, wife of Express supremo Sir David Stevens. Now she’s organising a counter-plot, jabbing her poison pen into the backs of her would-be executioners.

But that has not stopped Punch and Judy from targeting their next victim: the great Sir John Junor himself, who keeps bad-mouthing Esser and Hitchen to his spies still on the Sunday Express.

*****

The Daily Express, it seems, is still under the impression that its rightful owners are the Beaverbrooks. Lady Beaver has recently taken to ringing the paper’s executives to complain of items she finds “offensive” or “anti-Tory”, to wit one poor hack’s reference to “booze and fags”.

The hack was summoned to Deputy Editor Leith McGrumble’s office and told to empty his desk and collect his cards. As stunned as were his building society and family, the minion duly complied, but first informed the Father of the Chapel. A ruckus ensued between various heads of department and, 24 hours later, the hack was reinstated. Later he was told that he had also been guilty of anti-Tory sentiments and had better keep his nose clean (ie brown) in the future.

Lady Beaverbrook is 94.

Christmas issue

Letters to the Editor

Bloodless…

Sir,

Less blood has flowed on the Sunday Express than you claim. Only one member of the News Desk is leaving the paper, entirely of his own volition. The only change in my own position is that my duties have been expanded.

Yours unanaemically, HENRY MACRORY

Assistant Editor,
Sunday Express

121 Fleet Street, London

Coo

Sir,

Your piece about me (Eye 651) is wrong in every detail.

I was not demoted from News Editor. I came off the desk in order to write for the new lively Sunday Express. It was entirely my idea and the move was approved by the editor.

Neither have I ever criticised Brian Hitchen in the Poppinjay or anywhere else. The remarks you attributed to me are a complete fabrication.

Your article was untrue and highly defamatory. I thought you had learned your lesson about checking facts after your recent High Court experience.

Kindly publish this letter. I know better than to expect an apology from you.

NOTHING stopped the Daily Express in 1972, not even the miners’ strike. It was the year of constant power cuts instigated by Prime Minister Edward Heath to cope with the lack of coal to fuel the power stations. And as the clock hit 4.14 on a winter's afternoon the Express news sub-editors slaved away by gaslight. Lord Drone recalls that the gas lamps on the ceiling were still there when the Fleet Street office was vacated in 1989. Who’s in the picture? We put a few names to faces HERE

_____________________________________________________

DroneTubeFarewell to Fleet Street

Fleet Street was full of journalists for the first time in many years when the London Press Club held a long lunch to mark the departure of the last newspaper from the Street of Broken Dreams. Watch the YouTube video of the event above and read the Guardian report

_______________________________________________________

DroneTube Exclusive

Life After The Front Page

This rare and previously largely unseen film, unearthed in the annals of Lord Drone, recalls the grand old days of Fleet Street. It includes interviews with Ann Buchanan, of The Sun and Daily Mirror; Clem Jones, from the Wolverhampton Express; Eric Todd of the Manchester Evening Chronicle and The Guardian; and George Bell and Ted Townshend of the Daily Telegraph.

The film, which was made by students of Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 1999, also includes someone called Alastair McIntyre (who he – Ed?) who addresses the public from the Daily Express offices in Blackfriars.

Runtime is 16 minutes._______________________________________________

DroneTube Exclusive

The Crusader Years 1900-1990

Only in the Drone: This video was supplied to Express staff in 1990 and is now published on the web for the first time.